exploring potential and possibility

Archive for the category “SCA”

I haven’t been doing SCA events for quite awhile. Part of the reason is because I had let all my SCA projects and interests fall by the wayside. I decided I wanted to get those interests moving again. To do that I decided to participate in the 100 Days of Arts & Sciences Lite challenge.

If you’d like to see my day to day progess, you can look for #100DaysofASLite on Facebook and Twitter. This is just going to be an overall update of how I’m doing so far.

Days 1-12

Gathering supplies

Research

Choosing methods

Refreshing my skill at making Lucet cords

Due to general life circumstances, I didn’t do any A&S work during the second half of January. Since I’m doing the Lite version of this challenge, I’m not starting over. I just pickws up with Day 13.

What do you do when you have some projects in mind that are above your current skill level? Either you choose to let those projects go, or you start practicing! So I’ll be doing a lot of practicing over the next couple of months. If I do enough, maybe I’ll even feel confident when I start working on the actual projects.

I already do a lot of practice writing and I can see the improvement in my storytelling and style. Whether I’m writing for myself or a wider audience, every time I put words on the page (or on a blog) I’m practicing. Am I always comfortable with sharing what comes of the practice? No. But feedback, constructive criticism is how I learn and improve. I’m comfortable with that idea when it comes to my writing.

I still need to get to that point with my other projects – whether it’s weaving and other fiber arts or calligraphy, illumination, and bookbinding. But I have to remind myself that I have much less experience in those areas than I do in writing. So of course my current efforts, practice or otherwise, have a lot of room for improvement.

So, more practice it is…. I’ll find my way through the shadows of doubt and self-criticism as I see improvement in my efforts. I don’t know that practice makes perfect, but conscientious practice does make one better at the thing you are practicing.

What skill are you going to practice until it shines from the shadows?

Last time I spotlighted a group of people. This time I’m putting the spotlight on just one person who is talented in a multitude of artistic and creative areas

Courtney Phi Art

Her name is Courtney. She does everything from fine art and calligraphy to sewing and embroidery. She inspires my own creative efforts but she’s so good at everything that sometimes I’m also intimidated by her talent.

If you’re a Harry Potter fan, she does personalized, calligraphed Hogwarts Acceptance letters. If you’re in the market for a special piece of artwork, she has an incredible eye and works in many different media.

You can find her on Facebook, purchase art and calligraphy at her Etsy store, or support her art and creative efforts over on Patreon. And if you can’t afford to purchase her art but still want to support and encourage her art, please tell your friends and family who might be in the market for a special gift or piece of artwork. Share these links on social media. Drop her a message on her Facebook page. Shine a little light in her direction.

Some of the skills I’m trying to improve on are my calligraphy and illumination skills. I’m kind of concentrating on Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantine) styles for now. Not many people in my area are doing this style, and I like the way the calligraphy and illumination look. These are two of the pieces I’ve done for a friend, even though I haven’t been playing in the SCA.

They came out pretty good, though I can still see lots of room for improvement.

Since this blog is a map of my wanderings at the shadows’ edge, I’m finding I need to start including a few things I hadn’t planned on. One of those things is what I read.

Now, I read a lot. Blame my step dad, who taught me how to speed read when I was in third grade. And I have feeling its only going to get worse because I just got a Kindle Touch for my birthday.

I can’t afford to buy books as fast as I read them, so very few of the books I post about here will probably be new – unless I can get advanced reader copies. Many of the books will be old friends that I return to when I want something I know will entertain me. Some of the books will be those that I use to research the various projects that I’m working on. So I may be posting about books from sci-fi and fantasy to the history of a particular period or how to make or do something.

I will start posting these reviews within the next week or so although I don’t know how often I’ll post them. I certainly won’t be posting about everything I read – just what I enjoy or find useful.

I’ve already posted some of my experiments with inkle weaving. Having done those, I decided to try my hand at embellishing my weaving. There are methods I wanted to try – brocading and pickup weaving. For some reason, I decided to try the brocading first.

Method

Brocading involves the use of a second weft thread or threads. Generally you want that thread to be double or triple the weight/size of your warp threads. This cuts down on the amount of warp that shows between your rows. The brocade weft is woven through the warp in a pre-determined pattern, which usually looks like a cross-stitch pattern. Basically, the brocade weft sit above the warp where you want it to show and below the warp where you don’t want it to show. The regular weft thread is woven normally, with no adjustments.

A celtic knotwork cross-stitch pattern that I used to try brocading my inkle weaving.

This is

The Pattern

This is the pattern I decided to start with.

I probably should have started out with something a bit simpler. Celtic knotwork really isn’t the easiest pattern to work with at first.

The advantage?

I realized I was doing something wrong with my first try pretty quickly.

The disadvantage?

It seemed like it took forever to get through one repetition of the pattern!

The Results

This is the first try at brocading. Obviously something went wront.

The First Attempt

This is my first attempt. The bottom is the celtic knotwork – not even recognizable for what it is!

Not understanding what was going wrong, I decided to try a simple diamond pattern .

The result was a bit better – at least the diamond is recognizable! But it’s not anywhere close to solid like it should be.

I went back to my instructions and re-read them, assuming that I had missed something when I read them the first time.

As it turned out, it wasn’t so much that I missed something as that I mis-read part of the instructions. Having figured out what went wrong, I decided to try again on the same band of weaving.

The second attempt at brocading. The technique is right, but only uses a single brocade thread.

The Second Attempt

This is the second attempt.

This time I got the technique right. the knotwork is more or less recognizable and the diamond is definitely recognizable.

The only problem I had with this one is the amount of the warp showing through. Obviously a single brocade thread isn’t enough to make a fairly solid pattern.

The Third Attempt

The third attempt at brocading – the brocading weft is doubled

This is the third and final attempt at brocading my inkle-weaving. The only difference between this one and the second one is that I doubled the brocade thread. The patterns are both more recognizable for what they are and less of the warp is showing. I think that in the future I will either triple the brocade thread or use a thread that is the equivalent of a triple weft.

Thoughts

Overall, I am very happy with the outcome. I feel like I have a solid understanding of how the process of brocading inkle weave works now and I think I can also apply it to card/tablet weaving in the future. I wouldn’t want to stop weaving in the middle of a pattern repetition – I’d be afraid I’d forget where I stopped. That being the case, I would want to keep my patterns small or make sure that I only wove when I had a good solid block of time.

Patterns and Sizes

My current explorations are in the area of inkle weaving. I’ve been playing with patterns and thread sizes.

simple alternating lines

bars, lacking contrast

same pattern, different colors and threads

I’m finding that the size 10 cotton crochet thread works up the quickest. It doesn’t snag on the heddles or pill and get fuzzy. The size 20 crochet thread might work up just as fast if my heddles were made of it rather than the size 10.

The size 10 crochet thread also seems to have given the cleanest version of the pattern, though that might be as much from the color choices as the thread size.

Heddle Variations

non-standard heddle pattern, black warp, gray weft

The most recently completed piece of inkle weaving was an experiment with which warp threads I heddled. In some spots I heddled two in a row and then left two alone. The result was a sort of speckled pattern where the weft showed through where the heddles didn’t alternate as usual. I’m wondering what kind of patterns I can come up with by coordinating various colors of warp and weft with heddle patterns.